Will we survive Mars?

NASA says the first humans will set foot on Mars in the mid-2030s. It will be the most dangerous mission any human has ever taken. So I wanted to know: What comes after that? Not how do we get there, but how will we survive once we do?

This is the first question we take on in our newest series, Glad You Asked. The series is produced and hosted by Joss Fong, Christophe Haubursin, Alex Clark, and me. In each episode, one of us takes on a question that we can’t stop obsessing about. We team up and do everything we can to find the answer, and sometimes that means getting stuck along the way.

But it’s always a fascinating journey. In this episode, we find out why scientists in the early 1900s thought there were intelligent aliens on Mars, why your blood would boil if you stood on the surface, how Elon Musk thinks we can transform the planet into a more Earth-like home, and how NASA plans to help astronauts cope with long-term isolation.

I went all over the country to figure out what it would take to survive on Mars, but there are four more episodes available today if you have YouTube Premium. In those episodes, Joss, Chrisophe, and Alex head off into the worlds of crying, dying, meming, and playing video games. But if you don’t have Premium, don’t worry — those episodes will be coming out once a week for free over the next four Tuesdays.

And if you came here hoping to learn more about what we cover in the Mars episode, here are a few key sources that informed my research and that I think you’ll enjoy:

NASA’s page about the Mars Exploration Program

NASA’s Johnson Space Center Oral History Project

International Space Station’s Integrated Medical Group Medical Checklist

“The Great Salt Lake Desert: Exploring the habitability of paleolakes on Earth and Mars”

“Inventory of CO2 available for terraforming Mars”

“A future Mars environment for science and exploration”

“The human factor in a mission to Mars”